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QUICK BITE;Colonel Sanders Would Be Amazed

Re that age-old question about the chicken and the egg, and which came first:

The answer is neither. It was the soybean.

At least that's the case if you're ordering any of the "chicken" dishes being offered on a special menu at Chopstix, a kosher Chinese takeout shop in Teaneck. Tofu and other soy products take center stage in more than 30 chicken dishes on the "Vegetarian Oriental Health Bar" menu that Chopstix developed for the Nine Days, a period when observant Jews do not eat meat because they are mourning the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.

Actually Chopstix is offering the special menu for 16 days, not just 9. "I wanted to give it a real chance," said Elie Y. Katz, who runs the restaurant along with Kong Sang Wang, his partner and the man responsible for "Chef Peter's specialties" on the menu. Mr. Katz won't be surprised if some of the Nine Days dishes earn a permanent place at Chopstix; he says the vegetarian dishes already on the menu have proved particularly popular since the takeout shop opened in January.

The special menu will be available until July 30, along with the regular Chopstix menu, which features real poultry in dishes like General Tso's chicken, which is Mr. Katz's favorite. There's also Fong Wang Gai, breaded chicken stuffed with pastrami, a legacy of Bernstein-on-Essex, the Manhattan restaurant that introduced kosher Chinese food almost 40 years ago.

Mr. Katz, who turned 22 last week, would like to leave his mark in the culinary world too. Musing about the possibilities of building a better egg roll or the potential for shipping frozen meals overseas, he says, "I'm ready to push this thing to the maximum." SUSAN JO KELLER